"thousands to die with the matter of their bodies? Charity builds a small-pox hospital and men bless it--rightly. It benefits its hundreds and its thousands. The same benevolence, operating under the force of the conserved energy of mind, discovers vaccination, and so benefits millions and tens of millions for ages after the small-pox hospital is back in the clay from which its bricks were burned. There is here no parallel possible between the results achieved--those of the one hand so immensely exceed those of the other. The whole problem of the present and future is to bring the accumulated force of suggestion from the past to bear on the given point--on the mind of the living man, capable in possibility, and failing to achieve only for lack of stimulus--of force, of power--as a steam-engine is incapable without force applied from without. And as it is the last shovel of coal that sets the engine to work, so the mind, prepared for the final suggestion that is to give it its highest usefulness, will remain inert if the suggestion fails it. These suggestions may come from nature or directly from other minds, but in the main they come from the force of mind preserved in books. Can there be any greater, any more capable benevolence, than that which gives this force its widest possible application? A million dollars may endow a hospital for a century. Half as much in an endowment making a library free may bring pressure to bear on some brain, that, as a result, will save more suffering for the human race than has been saved by vaccination." LONGEVITY. CHAPTER XIV. LONGEVITY. "Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem." How long shall a man live? That depends entirely upon the _Liver!_--_Punch. If you have read with care the preceding chapters of this work, and paused between the lines to reflect, you will not now have to be retold our panacea for a long life. By this we mean the usually allotted three-score and ten, or also the 120 years given as the limit in Genesis, 3rd and 6th chapters. These ages, however, are not common in any country or age. There are many instances of 70 years, but not enough to be called common, while it is the "survival of the fittest" that reach 120 years.